Search results for "ECOLOGY"

Assessing metabolic constraints on the maximum body size of actinopterygians: locomotion energetics of Leedsichthys problematicus (Actinopterygii, Pa…

2018

Maximum sizes attained by living actinopterygians are much smaller than those reached by chondrichthyans. Several factors, including the high metabolic requirements of bony fishes, have been proposed as possible body‐size constraints but no empirical approaches exist. Remarkably, fossil evidence has rarely been considered despite some extinct actinopterygians reaching sizes comparable to those of the largest living sharks. Here, we have assessed the locomotion energetics of Leedsichthys problematicus, an extinct gigantic suspension‐feeder and the largest actinopterygian ever known, shedding light on the metabolic limits of body size in actinopterygians and the possible underlying factors th…

First occurrence of fossil vertebrates from the Carboniferous of Colombia

2020

Data concerning Paleozoic vertebrates from the South American continent are still scarce. In Colombia, occurrences were until now restricted to the Late Devonian fish assemblage from Floresta and, ...

Macrofossil evidence of Late Holocene presence of Aldrovanda vesiculosa L. in Central-Eastern Europe (Poland) and East Africa (Tanzania)

2015

International audience; To date, the seeds of waterwheel plant (Aldrovanda vesiculosa) were only found in Europe, in sediments of the Eemian and Mazovian Interglacials. The absence of A. vesiculosa seeds in European Holocene deposits is probably due to unfavorable climatic conditions, i.e. lower temperature, during this period: in temperate zones, A. vesiculosa reproduces mainly in a vegetative way; it rarely blooms and only occasionally produces seeds. In this paper, subfossil seeds of A. vesiculosa were identified in two peat bogs: one (Sucha Kobyła) in SE Poland and another one (Kyambangunguru) in SW Tanzania. Single seeds of this plant were found in a peat layer from the Polish site for…

Evaluating the influences of temperature, primary production, and evolutionary history on bivalve growth rates

2019

AbstractOrganismal metabolic rates reflect the interaction of environmental and physiological factors. Thus, calcifying organisms that record growth history can provide insight into both the ancient environments in which they lived and their own physiology and life history. However, interpreting them requires understanding which environmental factors have the greatest influence on growth rate and the extent to which evolutionary history constrains growth rates across lineages. We integrated satellite measurements of sea-surface temperature and chlorophyll-a concentration with a database of growth coefficients, body sizes, and life spans for 692 populations of living marine bivalves in 195 s…

The Italian Loci Classici Census

2012

Arable-weed flora and its pollen representation: A case study from the eastern part of France

2007

International audience; Local pollen deposition in human-influenced vegetation types is studied with the aim of establishing the relationship between arable-weed vegetation and its pollen representation as an aid in interpreting human presence and impact on vegetation from pollen assemblages. The study area is located in the Franche-Comté region, eastern part of France. The presence of plants within 100 m2 plots and their pollen representation in moss samples within the same plots was recorded from different crops and annual fallows. Patterns in the vegetation and pollen assemblages were investigated separately using principal coordinate analysis (PCoA). Procrustean co-inertia analysis (PCI…

Use of nursery areas by the extinct megatooth shark Otodus megalodon (Chondrichthyes: Lamniformes)

2020

Nursery areas are fundamental for the success of many marine species, particularly for large, slow-growing taxa with low fecundity and high age of maturity. Here, we examine the population size-class structure of the extinct gigantic shark Otodus megalodon in a newly described middle Miocene locality from Northeastern Spain, as well as in eight previously known formations (Temblor, Calvert, Pisco, Gatún, Chucunaque, Bahía Inglesa, Yorktown and Bone Valley). In all cases, body lengths of all individuals were inferred from dental parameters and the size-class structure was estimated from kernel probability density functions and Gaussian mixture models. Our analyses support the presence of fi…

Toros-Menalla (Chad, 7 Ma), the earliest hominin-bearing area: how many mammal paleocommunities?

2014

12 pages; International audience; The fossiliferous area of Toros-Menalla (TM) (Djurab Desert, northern Chad) has yielded one of the richest African mammal faunas of the late Miocene. It is also the place where the earliest known hominin, Sahelanthropus tchadensis, was found. Although more than 300 localities are recorded in that area, previous paleoecological studies focused only on the largest and richest one. The integration of the material from other TM localities, and thus of a significant number of mammal taxa, is crucial to improve the corresponding paleoenvironmental reconstructions. Before such inferences can be drawn, it is necessary to test for the ecological integrity of these m…

New data on bat fossils from Middle and Upper Pleistocene localities of France

2011

We describe the bat fossils preserved in four sites from the middle and upper Pleistocene, three of them being well-known French localities: the rock shelter of Les Valerots, the caves of l’Escale at Saint Estève Janson and ‘‘du Prince’’ at Grimaldi (Italy), and the filling of Combe-Grenal, all of them containing microvertebrate assemblages with yet undescribed bat fossils. All species represented in these four localities are still presently distributed in France and had been previously recorded in other Pleistocene localities of central and western Europe, including France. The four assemblages differ both in the abundance of bat fossils as in species composition. The characteristics of ea…

Nomenclatural revision concerning some genera of the Order Trigoniida (Bivalvia)

2018

The authors have become aware of a couple of nomenclatural conflicts involving Mesozoic trigoniid genera, which are in need of clarification and proposal of replacement names: The case of Protrigonia. The subgenus Trigonia (Protrigonia) Guo, 1985 (p. 204, 269; type species Trigonia (Protrigonia) yunnanensis Guo, 1985), was proposed to encompass those species referred to the genus Trigonia which, according to that author, have small and nearly smooth shells and relatively weak teeth. Guo (1985) also included other Triassic species: Trigonia gaytani (von Klipstein, 1843) and Trigonia zlambachiensis Haas, 1909. According to Fang et al. (2009, p. 55) there was a wrong translation from the Chine…